{"id":8409,"date":"2009-09-14T11:40:39","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/?p=8409"},"modified":"2009-09-14T11:41:14","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T17:41:14","slug":"reading-rainbow-1983-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/2009\/09\/reading-rainbow-1983-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading Rainbow (1983 – 2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, yes. Technically Reading Rainbow was already mostly-dead. It being in reruns and all. Sure, sure. The “death” happened in late August(about 16 days ago as of this post). Last night, Adult Swim’s post-Robot Chicken bump made the loss all the more real. Idle scanning for reasons why PBS would let a mainstay fall into complete death lead to a maddening discovery.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object>Grant says the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow<\/em> can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading \u00e2\u20ac\u201d like phonics and spelling.<\/p>\n

Grant says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but that’s not what Reading Rainbow<\/em> was trying to do.<\/p>\n

“Reading Rainbow <\/em>taught kids why to read<\/a>,” Grant says. “You know, the love of reading \u00e2\u20ac\u201d [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All the snark in the world fails to vocalize our utter dismay.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object> <\/div>\n

(via NPR<\/a>, TV Squad<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, yes. Technically Reading Rainbow was already mostly-dead. It being in reruns and all. Sure, sure. The “death” happened in late August(about 16 days ago as of this post). Last night, Adult Swim’s post-Robot Chicken bump made the loss all the more real. Idle scanning for reasons why PBS would let a mainstay fall into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[31,147,512,120,1518,225],"class_list":["post-8409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-save-the-humans","tag-sumbitch","tag-the-end-times","tag-the-shadow-of-bush-is-long-and-perilous","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.groonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}